After their early elimination from the Champions League last season, Manchester United must have felt as though as they exorcised a few ghosts upon their return to the competition on Wednesday when they overcame Galatasaray 1-0 at Old Trafford.

But just as that was a cathartic experience for the team and Sir Alex Ferguson, the United manager, so it must have been for Darren Fletcher who, after a long battle for fitness that at one point he seemed in danger of losing, the midfielder made a rapturously received return of his own.